Walking in a Glitter Wonderland
by whiteswan
Summary: At work they're professionals, the top of their fields. When dealing with one of parenthood's most dreaded chores...not so much. Written for the FB JJ/Hotch Safe Haven Christmas Exchange


Walking in a Glitter Wonderland

Written for Jekkah in the JJ/Hotch Safe Haven Fic Exchange; the prompts were snowflake, green wrapping paper, gingerbread house and hot chocolate. Sorry Jekkah, I couldn't quite work in the Christmas socks!

"Tell me again why we're doing this?"

"Because we both said that with as much as we're away we wanted to do what we could when we're at home. And since we're on stand down this week, we have the time."

Hotch grumbled as he cut the last opening into the thick cardboard, "And how sleep-deprived were we when Garcia told us about this?"

His wife grinned at her his disgruntled expression, "Between us, I think we were on about twelve hours over three days." She sipped her hot chocolate and then set it down to take up needle and thread again, "It could be worse."

The profiler groaned as he set down the X-acto knife and reached for the first roll of green wrapping paper, "Jayje, it's eleven at night and we're sitting here making costumes for a school play...for tomorrow. How could it be worse?"

"We could have been asked to make the gingerbread house costume. We got off easy by comparison." Her husband just rolled his eyes in response, making her laugh. The laugh turned into a groan a moment later when a shower of silver glitter fell from the gigantic fabric snowflake that she was trying to attach to Henry's white sweatshirt and landed all over her slacks and the floor, "Great, I'm going to be vacuuming this up for weeks!"

Hotch carefully hid his grin behind the rim of his coffee cup; JJ hated glitter with a passion. And she had yet to realize that she'd gotten some streaked through her hair where she'd run her hands through it in frustration as she worked. "The boys are excited, though I know that Jack's relieved that he gets to be a present instead of a snowflake."

The blonde laughed at the memory of their son's look of disgust at the idea, "I guess there's only so much an eight-year-old's dignity can take."

Silence fell over the two for a while as JJ finished tacking the be-glittered snowflake to the shirt and coated a baseball cap in kind and Hotch worked to wrap the giant cardboard box in the green paper. The quiet was only broken when he got to the point of attaching the ribbon to the 'lid,' "Jayje, would you mind giving me a hand here? You're better with bows than I am."

"Sure."

It took a few minutes and a bit of cursing but between them they managed to fashion a large gold bow and attach it to the lid of the costume. Once it was secured the profiler set the costume aside with a sigh of relief and sank back into the couch, "Thank God that's done. Give me an unsub any day!"

His wife giggled and snuggled into his side, hot chocolate once again in hand, "Agreed! Next time, we let Pen handle this project; it's right up her alley."

Hotch reached for his own mug with a groan, "There's going to be a next time?"

"Aaron, between the two boys and this little one, I figure we've got at least another ten years of elementary school plays ahead of us," JJ eyed his coffee cup with envy as she sipped her chocolate, "Though hopefully we get more advanced notice in the future."  
"I'll put Garcia on retainer for costume making then," Hotch eyed her with concern when she yawned, "Let's head up to bed, you need your rest."

"Are you going to fuss for the next six months?" JJ gave him a look of affectionate exasperation even as she set her cup down and stood in concession to the idea.

"Absolutely." Though as he followed her up the stairs he decided not to tell her about the streaks in her hair…he wanted to see her reaction when she spotted them.

He got his wish the next morning when they arrived at the BAU and entered the little kitchenette where Reid was guzzling his first cup of coffee. The younger profiler blinked in surprise upon seeing them and cautiously asked, "Uh JJ…why are there sparkles in your hair?"

JJ had been tired and in enough of a hurry not to notice the glitter that morning when she was getting ready but at this question she whipped out a compact to verify Reid's observation. Seeing the silver winking at her from her reflection she whirled around just in time to catch her husband's smirk, "Aaron Hotchner, why didn't you tell me?"

'Ah yes, this was going to be an interesting day,' Reid thought as he watched JJ close in on the Unit Chief, 'an interesting day for sure.'

Finis


End file.
